The powers of judicial review
In making this historic decision of establishing a new and independent court, the negotiators effectively put an end to parliamentary sovereignty. Since 1910, parliamentary sovereignty had been the country’s governance system, which had allowed the whites-only legislature to enact apartheid laws without the scrutiny of a court that had the right to review the laws and powers of Parliament. Previous apartheid legislation disallowed any court of law ‘to inquire into or to pronounce upon the validity of an act of Parliament’.
